Japanese disaster not enough reason to shut down N.J. nuclear plant

SCOTT LITUCHY/THE STAR-LEDGEROyster Creek, located along Route 9 in the Forked River section of Lacey Township.

Japan’s nuclear crisis isn’t cause to overturn the licensing permits for the Oyster Creek plant in New Jersey, a federal appeals court has ruled.

No good reason has emerged to second-guess the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s technical review of safety at the Ocean County facility, the judges decided. And they’re right.

Closing down this nuclear plant would push up electric rates and require fossil fuel generation to fill the gap — both big downsides. Nuclear power is our primary energy source in New Jersey. It’s cheap and it doesn’t harm the climate greatly. If we blindly shut down our nuclear plants, we may increase the risk of global warming.

That’s not to say safety improvements aren’t necessary. Two of our state’s nuclear plants, including Oyster Creek, have designs similar to the crippled reactors in Japan, which suffered a meltdown after the March 11 earthquake and tsunami shut down their electricity and backup diesel generators failed.

The recent litigation surrounding Oyster Creek, America’s oldest operating nuclear reactor, has spotlighted how plants with such vintage designs could be improved. It led Exelon, which owns the plant, to better monitor both radioactive water leaks and a crucial safety liner that encloses the reactor. This steel wall was designed to contain radiation in the event of an accident, but corrosion has made it thinner over time.

And experts say there are other safety concerns, too, such as the pools that store spent fuel. These storage pools, which hold what is essentially radioactive trash, must be cooled. If the spent fuel were moved out of the storage pools to dry casks, there would be less danger of overheating and better fire protection.

So it’s smart that the state Department of Environmental Protection has appointed a safety oversight panel for Oyster Creek, which should include an independent nuclear engineer — someone who hasn’t previously been involved with signing off on the plant’s safety, who can examine these issues with fresh eyes.

Japan’s disaster shouldn’t be used as convenient leverage by anti-nuclear groups to shut down more plants. But it should serve as a cautionary tale, exerting political pressure to improve their safety.